⚠️ EXTREMELY SENSITIVE CONTENT – 18+ ONLY ⚠️
This post discusses crimes committed at Stutthof concentration camp and the public execution of its personnel in 1946. No graphic details – shared solely for remembrance and historical education.
4 July 1946 – The Public Executions on Biskupia Górka Hill
On the morning of 4 July 1946, more than 200,000 residents of Gdańsk and surrounding areas gathered silently on Biskupia Górka hill. They had come to witness one of the largest public executions in post-war Poland.
Eleven gallows had been erected on an open field. Eleven death sentences handed down just over a month earlier in the First Stutthof Trial (25 April – 31 May 1946) were about to be carried out.
Among the condemned were five young women who had served as SS guards (Aufseherinnen) at Stutthof concentration camp:
Gerda Steinhoff
Jenny-Wanda Barkmann
Wanda Klaff
Ewa Paradies
Elisabeth Becker
All aged between 23 and 26, they had volunteered for guard duty and were identified by hundreds of survivors as among the most cruel overseers at Stutthof and its subcamps.
After liberation on 9 May 1945, all five were arrested within months. During the Gdańsk trial, former prisoners – many still bearing the marks of their suffering – took the stand to testify against them. On 31 May 1946 the court sentenced the five women and six other defendants to death.
At 7 a.m. on 4 July the sentences were carried out in public. The five female guards were among those hanged before a silent crowd. Many onlookers – citizens and former prisoners alike – wept as they watched the faces that had once been their nightmare finally face justice.
We recall this event today not out of hatred, but to honour the memory of the more than 65,000 victims who perished at Stutthof; to recognise the courage of the survivors who testified; and to reaffirm that crimes against humanity must always be brought to justice, no matter how much time has passed.
Official sources:
Stutthof Museum archives
Records of the 1946 Stutthof Trial – Institute of National Remembrance (IPN), Poland
Daniel Blatman, “The Death Marches” (2011)